I believe everyone has a backstory.
When I read a book or watch a film, I’m often drawn not just to the heroes, but to the minor characters standing at the edges of the scene, the guard at the gate, the servant in the corridor, the person who appears once and vanishes again. I wonder who they were before the story arrived, and who they become after it moves on.
My fiction grows out of that curiosity. I’m interested in power, consequence, and choice, but also in the quiet lives affected by them. I tend to write close to my characters, allowing readers inside their fears and doubts, while occasionally stepping back to show the wider forces shaping their world. It’s a way of honouring both the individual and the system they’re caught within.
I write fantasy because it allows those questions to be asked at a distance, where crowns, courts, and myths make the invisible visible. But at heart, the stories are about people: how they love, how they fail, and how they try to live with what they’ve done.